We are leaving in less than a month and I can feel time accelerating like a tachycardia.  The past few weeks have been jammed with work and planning.  Not planning for the trip but planning for my absence.  I am living a list driven, hyper-alert life trying to put as many mechanisms and safe guards in place as may be needed.  Let’s say our home burns down while we are gone.  What would we miss most?  Should I put the family photo albums in safe storage?  Is my will up to date and could my sons sort out the mess I would leave?  Beth has arranged for emergency medical evacuation from anywhere in the world.  What if she is stricken and cannot communicate? I’d better get the name of the insurer and the policy number (make a note).   The stock market has been suspiciously good these past five years and undoubtedly will “correct” when I am in the mountains of St Lanka without access to the internet.  Should I sell now?  Hedge?   Oy!  The irony here is that all this high gain planning is prelude to what I imagine will be a deafening crash of quietude.  I envision myself getting settled in our Paris apartment, where we are starting off, going for a walk, coming back to the apartment and thinking “now what do I do?”  Our nightly TV ritual will no longer be in play making the expanse of time even greater.  Alone, me myself I (and Beth).  No lists to distract us.  Only our minds parsing the slow passage of time.